Review of Either a Benevolent Conspiracy or Fever-Induced Hallucination, By Johnathan

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So this is a theory that I came up with on the bus a couple of days ago, while staring at someone's hat. I did have a pretty wicked fever at the time, so bear that in mind.

The hat that I was staring at was a pretty bad fake leopard print. I eventually had to look out the window, which I did just in time to see someone drive by carrying a faux-leopard handbag. My over-heated brain began ticking over: 'There sure is a lot of leopard print in the world,' I thought, 'I wonder if anyone wears real leopard any more, since it looks so tacky.' That's when it hit me: that's why there's so much awful spotted merchandise in the world. It's a vast conspiracy by the manufacturers and consumers of such goods to save the noble leopard from the fur industry! Every pair of stretch pants or set of seat covers adorned with that distinctive pattern acts as another nail in the leopard-fur industry's coffin. What right-minded society maven would want to wear leopard after seeing it stretched across the generous buttocks of the woman who manages her cuticles down at the local Nail Abyss?

Watch out for some sort of faux wolf pelt to become the newest NASCAR enthusiast's accessory, thus vindicating my theories.

JOHN APPROVED

Comics are Awesome!

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Hot damn my comics were great this week. Brave and the Bold, Superman, Catwoman, 52, Wonder Woman, The Spirit...all great. I was about a week late reading them due to my vacation. The guest art on Superman was beautiful! Nice job, Peter Vale!

And I can say all of my comics were great because I don't pick up Civil War, which I understand had a pretty weak conclusion. So that's good to keep in mind as I struggle to read the whole damn series. Fortunately, thanks to the stellar and hilarious efforts of hard-working comic bloggers like Christopher Bird and Chris Sims, I don't really have to read it.

Do check them out. Chris Sims gives us Civil War in 30 seconds:


And Christopher Bird gives us all seven issues re-mixed with far more interesting and amusing text:

Postcards from Mavel Super Hero Island

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I'm back home now. My superpowers have been fully re-charged from Florida's warm sun and I'm ready to blog like no blogger has ever blogged before. Blog!

I will miss the warm weather, but I'm pleased to have escaped America and it's deadly "orange" terror alert level (running joke: it was only yellow before I got there). Here the terror alert holds steady at...well, nothing. Because we don't colour code our abstract national sentiments here. If I had to guess, I'd say the terror alert is at level "meh" here.

So, Marvel Island. I have actually been there before. Four times before, actually. And EVERY TIME the damn Spider-Man ride BREAKS! You have to fix that shit, Universal Studios! Seriously! Good ride, though. Excellent waiting area, too.

Dr Doom's Fear Fall was one of the few rides I hadn't been on before. Something about that Spider-Man ride breaking repeatedly kinda makes you lose confidence in strapping yourself into a death drop machine. It's fun that a theme park would assume that people would be into a ride that has the supposed purpose of harnessing enough "fear fuel" to destroy the Fantastic Four. I gotta say, Doom, the ride was a little weak. Looked great, kinda scary. Don't know if you got enough fear out of me to destroy your enemies. If you were harnessing confusion, maybe...

The whole island looks great. Lots of fun stuff to look at. I dream of a DC-themed park that puts this amount of effort in. Cause Six Flags ain't cuttin' it.


Hee! Namor: King of the Restrooms!

Oh, and check this out:

Ha! Marvel heroes ride ATVs! I'd like to see Superman ride one of those. Except I WON'T because he would NEVER do that. The saddest thing was when some dude blew an airhorn and all the heroes had to come running and jump on these little vehicles and ride back into their...cage...I presume.

Here's my buddy Steph and her bespectacled pal, Cyclops:

This was kinda puzzling:

The good news is that I did get to meet Captain America. It was magical.

Marvel Thoughts for the Day

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As I've already shared, I am on a quest to discover why I have been unable to embrace Marvel, despite a crazy love for little colourful pictures of people in costumes emitting bubbles of text. I feel that documenting my thoughts as I explore the Marvel universe is a good way to get to the root of the problem.

So here's my Marvel thoughts for the day:

How many Marvel heroes are unfortunate vicitims? And what I mean, is, how many of them are more cursed than gifted, and would much prefer being normal? By my count, it's quite a few. The Hulk would be the most obvious. Also, The Thing, Ghost Rider and a whole lot of mutants. I know that the whole point of Marvel is to offer superhero stories that are gritty and real and full of inner conflict...but jeez! Marvel makes it hard for comic readers to do what we like best: fantasize about being superheroes. Every damn character is miserable.

I think I have a crush on Captain America. I look forward to meeting him on the Mythical Marvel Island at Universal Studios on Sunday. I will be getting my nails done first.
Oddly, I might also have a crush on Iron Man. So it makes it hard to "choose sides," as it were. (Actually, Iron Man is clearly the douche in Civil War. It's like choosing between ice cream and cancer).
It's also clear that Captain America and Iron Man have crushes on each other, but that kinda goes without saying. I mean, are we supposed to not think they are in love?

Namor is kinda awesome.

Nicolas Cage seemed to be having a lot of fun playing Ghost Rider. I seriously kinda liked that movie. I mean to me, Ghost Rider looks cool, and that's all he really means to me. So as long as he looked cool in the movie (he did) that's all I care about. Also, I always think that I hate Nicolas Cage, but every time I watch one of his movies I kinda love him. He's so crazy. Was all the stuff in the movie about jelly beans and the Carpenters made up, or was that canon? Delightful!

Have you seen the ads for that singing, dancing Spider-Man doll for toddlers? It's creepy.